Taxi instructions, also referred to as a taxi clearance, provide a specific route (i.e., a sequence of taxiways, runways, or segments thereof) which an aircraft (or another vehicle) should follow when traversing between locations on the ground (e.g., between terminals, hangars and/or runways) to avoid confusion and/or runway incursions or to otherwise maintain safe and organized ground traffic flow. Taxi instructions are typically received by a pilot from an air traffic controller immediately prior to taxiing the aircraft, for example, from a terminal and/or hangar to a runway for departure, from a runway to a terminal and/or hangar after landing, or to otherwise taxi the aircraft clear of a runway.
Traditionally, after receiving taxi instructions at an airport, the pilot would manually record the taxi instructions (e.g., by writing them down on a piece of paper) and then utilize a paper chart corresponding to that airport to navigate the aircraft about the airport in accordance with the received taxi instructions. This undesirably increases a pilot's workload and distracts the pilot's focus and/or attention on operating the aircraft, and thus, degrades the pilot's situational awareness. Additionally, larger airports typically have a large number of taxiways, runways, terminals and/or hangars, potentially resulting in more complex taxi instructions, which in combination with an increasing amount of ground traffic (which also increases the likelihood of runway incursions), further increases the demand on a pilot. Modern electronic systems have been adapted to allow the pilot to input the taxi instructions for presentation on an onboard display device. However, many existing approaches often still require the pilot manually locate the proper keys, buttons, or other user interface elements and manually input the complete sequence of instructions received from the air traffic controller accurately, and thereby fail to appreciably reduce the pilot's workload.